Silence (Is What's Left To Us)
by androidilenya
Summary: Míriel's return from the Halls of Vairë does not go as smoothly as she might have hoped. (Sequel to 'like thread through a needle'.)


**Reembodied!Míriel and Indis, pre-femslash. Warnings for blood, bizarre dream sequences, and borderline panic attacks – Míriel's head isn't really the best place to be at the moment. (The trauma of readjusting to having an actual body?) **

**Written for Legendarium Ladies April and more or less a sequel to _like thread through a needle._**

* * *

><p>Everywhere she looked was an echo of an older life, the same and somehow different, a subtle change that set her on edge, as though she had walked into a familiar room to find all the furnishings moved slightly out of place.<p>

_Well. It has been a few hundred years since you walked these paths––did you truly expect everything to have remained as it was when you left?_

Too much had happened for that to be the case. To this land, and to her as well.

Yet the land surrounding Tirion were remarkably similar to the one she remembered; enough so, at least, that she was able to find her way into the city without any trouble at all. The streets themselves had been repaved in the intervening centuries (dozens of times, perhaps), but the buildings were the same white marble, and some of the faces she passed in the street were familiar.

Few recognized her. Perhaps they averted their eyes on purpose, to avoid seeing her––or to spare her the weight of their gazes. She was left to make her way down the street on feet that still felt unsteady, walking slowly to let her legs get used to the motion of walking again.

The streets were quiet, and yet still too loud in her ears, which were accustomed to the dead stillness of Vairë's halls.

A clatter of hooves on stone jerked her out of thought. She had to remind herself to move aside for the passing horses, and it seemed to take several seconds too long for her feet to obey.

_Too many people_, she thought, dazed, and nearly stumbled over a loose cobblestone. For so long, the only faces she had seen had been Vairë's and the ones in her tapestries, and tapestries did not move like this, did not speak (aloud, at least).

The roads leading up to the palace were a bit quieter, the houses drawn tight and windows closed. Towards the edges of the city, many houses had been deserted, with crumbling walls and windows gaping holes in the dingy stone; here, they were clearly still inhabited. She had known that. Her tapestries had followed the migration of the Eldar further into the city, consolidating the population and leaving abandoned houses in their wake. It was another thing entirely to see the decayed homes with her own eyes.

Silent thread was not a substitute for being there and watching events unfold.

And it seemed that more had changed than she thought, because she reached the palace earlier than she had expected––unless she had been that lost in her own thoughts, and had simply not noticed her feet leading her up the steps and to the palace doors.

The doors were wide open, no guards set before them. (And why should there be guards? She had spent too long weaving images of Beleriand, and the armor of her grandchildren. Valinor was different, Valinor was _safe_.)

She reached the inner door, raised her hand to knock. Footsteps drew near from the other side, then paused. The handle turned.

Indis' eyes widened, lips parting with surprise. Her hand drifted to the sill as if to steady herself.

"Míriel."

She nearly flinched with surprise––how long had it been since someone else had spoken her name with such warmth?

Indis stepped forward, extending a hand, and Míriel hesitated before taking it, suppressing a shiver as their skin brushed.

She swallowed, then spoke, her voice unfamiliar in her own ears after so long in silence. "Indis. Did they tell you I was coming?"

Indis shook her head, a smile breaking across her face. "You're really here."

"I am." She squeezed Indis' fingers, startled at the way her own lips curved upwards before she remembered that she could smile, that this was how it felt to be happy.

* * *

><p>They did not speak of her time in the Halls, and for that, Míriel was grateful. Indeed, by the way Indis behaved, one might have thought that Míriel was simply another visitor, behind on the most current news by months rather than centuries. (Simply another visitor, if one could not see the way her eyes lingered on Míriel, the warmth in her smile whenever she spoke.)<p>

Indis was a veritable fountain of the sort of small things Míriel had most missed, telling her all the details of life in Tirion, of how the Eldar lived now––small things that Míriel soaked up, relieved to hear things of peace and joy. They ate dinner together, and Míriel relished the rich tastes, her body still acclimating to living out here, in the world. She had forgotten more than she thought.

By the time they finished, she was beginning to realize how much of a toll reentering the world had had on her. She struggled to stay awake for the sake of hearing Indis continue to speak, but the Vanya caught her yawn before she could stifle it.

"I'm sorry, I've been sitting here prattling on and you must be exhausted." She stood before Míriel could protest, offering her an arm. "I'll show you to a room upstairs, and you can sleep as long as you want."

Míriel opened her mouth, ready to insist that she was _fine_, that there was nothing she wanted to do but sit here and listen to Indis for awhile longer, that she had had enough of _resting_ to last her for a long time, but when she stood up the world seemed to spin for an instant. She caught herself on the table, felt Indis' hands on her shoulders.

"Míriel?"

(_I'm so tired, I just want to sleep––_)

_And wake again,_ she insisted, summoning enough energy to take one breath, then another.

"I'm sorry," she said, eyes fixed on the fine grain of the table, trying to keep her voice light. "I––perhaps that room would be a good idea. But tomorrow...?"

When the world had steadied enough she looked up, catching the concern that flitted across Indis' face before she replaced it with a smile.

"Tomorrow," she said gently, "we can do whatever you wish. I promise." She reached up, hesitated, then brushed a strand of hair from Míriel's face. Her lips brushed Míriel's cheek, soft and warm.

"I missed you," Míriel managed to say, leaning on Indis as they made their way up the stairs, towards the queen's quarters.

Indis buried her face in Míriel's hair, draping an arm over her shoulder and squeezing tight. "And I missed you, Míriel."

* * *

><p>The instant Míriel blew out the candle that Indis had left beside her bed, she was wide awake.<p>

She twisted the sheets around her, marveling at the silken slide of cloth against her skin. The curtains shifted in the night wind, the soft whisper sending a chill down her spine. Moonlight filtered through the gauzy cloth, muted white like the luminous threads of Vairë's tapestries, and she turned away from the soft glow, suddenly uneasy.

It was too quiet.

Or perhaps that was not quite it. It had been quiet in Vairë's halls, after all––the utter quiet of death (the silence of a place where there had never been life to begin with). There was noise, here. A susurration of wind through the branches of the blossoming trees below her window. Someone calling, further in the city. And the high, distant cry of the stars, like the echoes of the dying through the flashing threads running through her fingers––

She clapped her hands over her ears. As soon as she thought about it, the night was suddenly nothing but sound, incessant and disorienting.

_Vairë,_ she thought, half-wild, and wondered if the Valië would heed her out here, in the rushing noise of this world.

_This isn't how I remember the world being._

She could hear the blood rushing her her veins, in these newly re-embodied limbs, the sound of her heartbeat pounding through her eardrums and radiating up into her fingertips, the sensation foreign and unsettling, as though there were something in her fighting to get free.

Was it always like this? Or had something gone wrong, had she waited too long to reenter the world, was it too _late_?

_And if I fall asleep here again, will I ever wake up?_

And then she was slipping under, the darkness tugging at her, and despite it all she tried to fight it, tried and failed to claw her way back into wakefulness.

* * *

><p>She pried her eyes open, startled by the golden light streaming through the window.<p>

"Are you finally awake, then?" Long fingers curled around her shoulder. She froze, suddenly frightened.

_No. Impossible._

"Or still asleep, hm?" A body, curled against her, and warm breath against the back of her neck.

She forced herself to roll over and look up into familiar grey eyes.

"There you are," Finwë whispered, smiling.

For an instant, she let herself believe that nothing had changed, that the years that followed this moment were only a dream, already fading at the edges. (But too much had happened, and she had never been very good at lying to herself.)

And yet it was easy to lean into his arms and close her eyes again, savor this warmth as if she'd never left it.

"Our son?" she mumbled into him, and felt the rumble of his laughter. He reached up, pressed a gentle hand to her stomach.

"You would know better than I."

She could remember weaving his death in red and black, every detail of it, down to the splashes of blood on the stone stairs. Vairë would have accepted anything she produced for that; it had been Míriel's own determination to tell every part of her family's history that had forced the agonizing image from her.

Finwë had died.

She pulled away, sitting up. "You're not––this isn't real."

"Míriel?" He reached for her, brow furrowing with concern, and she flinched.

"No," she snapped. "I'm done with illusion, I'm done with everything that's _not real_, I don't want this back––" _Not if it's only another lie._

Finwë shook his head, eyes suddenly sad. He let his hand fall. "It could be real."

She closed her eyes, thought about weaving golden hair and hidden grief. Indis was waiting for her in the real world.

When she opened them, Finwë was gone.

* * *

><p>Threads flickered through her fingers, the colors shifting even as she wove them together, the image on the cloth changing.<p>

_I never left_, she realized, and wondered why she would have thought otherwise.

Her fingers tangled in the strings, fabric whipping around her limbs and tugging her forward, and she watched as if from a distance as the tapestry swelled until it swallowed the whole world, pulling reality deep into its hungry depths.

* * *

><p>She was curled around Indis' body, their skin pressed so close she could feel her warmth, her face buried in fine golden hair.<p>

"Indis," she mumbled, and thought she might have heard a soft sigh in reply.

Her hands were wet.

"Indis?"

She struggled up, the sheets tangling in her limbs, dragging her down. Indis' head lolled back against her chest, blue eyes fixed open, mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. There was blood down the front of her nightgown, blood slicked across Míriel's hands, blood pooling under their bodies, darkest at the jagged tear across Indis' throat.

Míriel's mouth opened soundlessly, throat clenching tight until the only sound that emerged was a thin, terrified whimper.

And then Indis moved, smiling and reaching up to touch Míriel's face with bloody fingers, the movement stiff and jerky like the puppets Míriel had watched as a child, wooden limbs strung on invisible wire. She thought of stiff joints flailing in a choreographed dance and nearly choked on the crazed laughter bubbling up in her throat.

"Did you do this?" Indis asked, voice a hoarse whisper, and Míriel pulled away, hands slipping in blood, a scream filling her mouth until she could _feel_ it, feel the horrified terror fighting free.

* * *

><p>She woke with a scream in her throat, barely managed to clamp her lips over the sound.<p>

_Dreams. A dream. Only––_

Except there was no _only _about it, was there? And she had not dreamed for so long––had not _needed_ to, not when the dreams spun into life under her fingers in glowing silver and dusky blue, not when the dreams were too real to be called illusion.

(One of the first tapestries she wove for Vairë's halls, when the weaving of them was still strange and new: Indis' golden head bent over a still body, lips hovering over a dead face, so close Míriel could have sworn she could feel her through the empty cloth.)

She sat up, biting her lip to keep from crying out, and it took her a moment to figure out why the room felt different.

Where had the moon gone?

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, feeling for the floor with her bare feet, and encountered nothing but thin air.

And fell.

* * *

><p>Over. Under. Red blue gold silver.<p>

Míriel jerked awake, fingers aching, as though she had spun thread through them fast enough to burn. She sat up as the cry of a child broke the stillness.

_Where am I?_

The floor held beneath her feet this time as she slid over the side of the bed. The room was suffused with a soft light, mingled gold and silver like a half-forgotten memory, and it took her several steps to realize that it was the light of the Mingling.

This was her old home. The bed she and Finwë had slept in, the house––

Míriel crossed the rest of the room at nearly a run.

The child lay in a wooden cradle, fists clenched and eyes screwed shut, mouth open in a confused wail. She leaned down, hands closing around the smooth wood. unable to tear her eyes away from the shock of black hair, the translucent blue feathering of veins under pale skin.

"Fëanáro?"

The child opened his eyes at the sound of her voice, cries trailing off as he uncurled his fists, reaching up for her. She bent to gather him up, doing her best to forget that this was not real (could not be real).

(Her son's face, twisted with anger and grief, lit with the light of the burning ships. _Let them burn, let all the world burn, there is nothing left here that I need––_)

_I'll change it,_ she thought, half-wild, remembering the shift of the world under her fingers. _It can be changed, the world can be set right, only give me another chance––_

The room darkened. She glanced up, taking an involuntary step back. There was a choking darkness creeping across the sliver of golden sky visible through the window. The curtains fluttered in a sudden breeze, chill air carrying the scent of corpse-flowers and decay.

Fëanáro began to cry again, clutching at her hair with tiny fists. There was an ancient exhaustion tugging at her with quiet insistence, yawning despair threatening to swallow her whole, _sleep, Míriel, and let this all end again._

_It will all be gone. Everything. The world will be quiet again, isn't that what you want?_

"No," she hissed, tightening her grip on her son. "No, damn you, I'm not going back there––"

(Aren't you tired, Míriel?)

The floor listed under her feet, throwing her off balance. She lurched forward, crying out, slipping forward into the abyss.

And woke again, and again.

* * *

><p>The world was silent.<p>

She was back in the dead halls, a half-finished tapestry before her. Her movements made no sound, the slip of thread on thread utterly silent.

_Is it that it makes no sound, or can you simply not hear it?_

Her hands slipped from the weaving, falling limp at her side. She jerked to her feet, sucking in a panicked breath, and she could not _hear_ it, could not hear her own breathing, could not hear _anything_––

(If she could not hear it, did it really exist?)

The door was open just a crack, no light or dark seeping in through the gap, only the same not-light that pervaded every corner of Vairë's domain. She lunged for it, clawing at the handle, and it still made no sound, though pain spiked through her fingers as her nails tore. The world was beyond, Vairë had let her go, she had _left_ this place.

It swung open. The hallway beyond stared back at her, blank and stretching into nothing. Her step faltered, her limbs suddenly leaden.

(_Aren't you tired, Míriel?_)

She took one step out, then another, and then she was running, feet pounding on the featureless floor so she could feel the vibration of her movement all up her body. They did not make a sound.

_No––no, please––_

One quick glance back over her shoulder. The doorway was gone. The hall stretched out past her sight, on and on and on, every inch lit by that blank, hueless light that seemed had no source. She could feel it in the heaviness of the air that rushed soundlessly in and out of her lungs.

She was so tired.

_This has to end somewhere. Keep going, just keep _going––

_(Yes, it has to end––and it only ends one way, doesn't it? Why don't you rest, Míriel, aren't you _tired?)

Her legs buckled beneath her, the colorless floor rushing up to meet her. Her hands shot out to break her fall, the impact painful and silent.

She screamed, and could not hear her own voice.

* * *

><p><em>You're broken, you know.<em>

_You went to Vairë's halls and ought to have stayed there, where you were meant to be. You do not deserve this world of noise and light, because you are too ruined, you waited too long to return and it's too late, the world moved on without you._

_The world forgot you, Míriel._

_And the world does not like to be reminded of what was forgotten._

* * *

><p>Míriel woke terrified and alone, and knew she had truly woken because she could hear the frantic beating of her heart, like the rush of the sea in her ears.<p>

This was real.

(_How can you know that?)_

Vairë had released her. Indis had taken her in. The world had changed, but she was in it again.

_How?_

Her throat closed tight, constricting around the breath she was trying to draw in. She buried her face in the blankets, curling up into a ball and trying to fight down the sobs rising in her chest.

_There's something wrong with me. _A realization, like remembering how to smile, like remembering what it was to dream.

She couldn't stay here. She had to leave, had to find somewhere else, somewhere––

_(Quiet.)_

No. She would not leave this world again. It had been a long time since she had been here, but surely she could adapt, could remember how to live as someone real again. It could not be that after all this time, she was not able to live.

She pulled the covers over her head, huddling in the dark and warmth beneath. (Like a child, you're acting like a _child_, what kind of coward are you, to be so afraid?)

_I can't do this. _

_(The world forgot you. There is no one for you, there was never anyone––)_

There was someone.

* * *

><p>Indis woke to the sound of harsh breathing and sat up, startled and worried and half convinced she was dreaming. "Is that you, Míriel?"<p>

There was a choked noise from the darkened room, like a half-formed sob. In the dim light filtering through the closed curtains, she could make out a shape standing beside the bed.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, and heard Míriel draw in a ragged breath.

"I can't do this, Indis." Her voice was strangled, a note of panic edging in.

"Can't do what?" She pushed the blankets aside, reached for Míriel's wrist. Míriel jerked at her touch, heartbeat jumping under her skin, and made another soft noise of fear.

"It's too much." With a sudden, convulsive movement she fell forward into Indis' arms, curling against her like a child. She was trembling violently, gasping for breath, and Indis ran her hands through her hair, soothing her, whispering in her ear and desperately trying to calm her down.

"It's okay, Míriel. You're safe. You're _safe_. I'm right here." _I won't let anything hurt you, I promise._

It didn't feel like enough.

"You can stay here," she found herself saying, and didn't know if she meant here in this house or here in her arms (found herself wishing for the latter). "You don't ever have to leave, you can stay here forever––"

"Don't," Míriel whispered, voice hoarse. "Don't––say _forever_, that's not––you can't––"

Indis pressed her lips to Míriel's forehead, rubbing slow circles between her shoulderblades until she felt Míriel relax against her, felt her trembling still.

"As long as you wish, then. Will that be enough?"

She felt Míriel's arms tighten around her as she nodded.

"Sleep," she added, and when Míriel stiffened, she added, "I'll be here when you wake."

"Promise?" Míriel murmured, voice already blurring with sleep, and Indis wrapped her arms around her, burying her face in silver hair.

"I promise."

Indis felt it when Míriel let go, breathing easing into the quiet pattern of sleep, and held her closer, counting the slow thrum of her heartbeat, marveling at the familiarity of it.

For now, this was enough.


End file.
